Why Forza 5 will only have a mere 200 cars compared to Forza 4’s 500

Turn 10 has fired a shot across Polyphony Digital’s bows in their decision not to carry Xbox 360 level cars over to the Xbox One, referencing the large proportion of Gran Turismo 5 and 6’s “non-premium” cars, which began life as PlayStation 2 models. Additionally, many of Forza 4’s tracks won’t be making the jump to Forza 5 because they were either inaccurate or in a few cases, the tracks themselves have changed.

Speaking to Eurogamer, the studio’s creative director Dan Greenawalt discussed studio’s drive for “next-generation quality” among both the game’s tracks and cars.

“We want that to be the standard for next-generation. Our goal’s not to carry old content over – and even with all the cars, we did the same process. There were some inaccuracies, and some cars were old-spec that we’d updated from Forza 2 to 3 to 4. But they didn’t have the poly count where we wanted it – and they weren’t as easy to up-res, so we just recaptured them. Some of them, the spec was good and we could add polygons where we needed them. So it came down to this rating system – and any track or car that wasn’t an A grade got either chucked or recaptured.

“Some of them needed light updating, and some of them needed heavy updating. Silverstone, for example, was a complete recapture. Several of our tracks were just plain wrong, either because they were poorly captured and technology’s moved on, or the track’s changed like Silverstone.”

Of course, all these high quality cars don’t come cheap, either to Turn 10 or Forza’s fans, with a $50 season pass that promises an additional 50 cars over six months. Despite the hefty price tag, Greenawalt says the reaction to the season pass has been mostly positive.

“The response has been good. That’s not to say everyone’s been happy about it. It’s just to say that the response with people that have been buying it and redeeming it, it’s one thing to buy it but if it’s a season pass it’s whether or not you log in every month to get it. People have been making the purchase and then logging in. It’s kind of like the whole gym membership thing – you buy 6 months and you never go. With the season passes, people redeem it, so we’re keeping people playing for 6 months.”